First, it was hours. Then hours melded into days, days into months, and months...has it been a year? Years? A temple bell doesn't ring in here. Wherever here is. Whenever.

All I know is the cold. The stone of the ground and the sound of rats or critters skittering across the shadows that cover the ominous room. All I know is the pain. The spasm thrumming through my body like a heartbeat that feels like a countdown to my last breath.

Breathe.

It hurts to breathe. It hurts to open my eyes, or even move them beneath my eyelids.

I remember the touch of Will's hands as he ran them over my broken ribs. How he always does it right before he breaks me over...and over...and over. An artist inspecting his canvas.

I scream, but my voice is shattered and gone, no more than a silent prayer for everything to end. To set me free. I jolt when my nerves flare through my body, but that only makes it worse. So I cry. I cry until he's finished. I cry when those soft, uncalloused, and warm hands mend the broken pieces back together. And I cry when I'm left on the floor to lay in with the cold and my slow thoughts.

I'd eat, but everything I swallow ends up becoming my pillow.

Sometimes I wake up to find myself smelling of Eucalyptus. Smelling like him. The one who breaks me. Not Will. He breaks me from the outside.

The other.

The...

Xaxias. That's his name. I think.

He breaks me from the inside. Placing his hands on my skeleton, and then his red eyes swallow me whole and I crumble and fall. Then there's this voice. Voices. Each pulling somewhere brighter. Pulling to the places that I remember. The ones I hold onto.

Fight, little one. Fight.

Dad. That's my father. He had the best smile. The one so rare you would've thought it a falling star come to land at your feet. He taught me to be strong. Trained me to protect those around me. And I couldn't. I couldn't. He's dead...because I couldn't. But I did. I saved everyone all those nights ago. I made my promise, and they got out. But I'm here.

It hurts.

Stand and fight.

Mom. How I miss her. Miss her eyes, her smile, and her warm arms that would be a blessing to feel around me right now. A blessing to have her cradle me in her lap and kiss my head. To tell me that she's here. But she's gone. I was seven, and I had nothing to offer her. No relief. No words. Nothing but my love that was useless to keep those blades from staining the sheets red. Useless. But I'm not. If I were useless, then I'd be dead. I'm worth more than they think, and they'll always underestimate me. That's why they'll fall. That's why the other voice is there. To remind me why the pain is necessary. Why it's all to be given back when my song ends.

Find him and you can find what you lost.

I had to. I had to break it. And it hurt. So much – it hurt.

I heard him beg. I felt him pull on what I'd only just discovered, and I had to let it go. I had to lose myself so that he would keep going. He wanted to find me. He begged for me, but I couldn't let him. My song had started, and though I want his voice to blend with my own like that night so long ago, the song wasn't written to be a duet. It was written to be a solo. A dark and treacherous path that weaves within itself and gets tied in knots. One only someone meant for another world could bear. One meant to make the world shudder beneath their feet.

And as the sound of the thick iron door scratching on the stones as it's opened marks my next loss of everything all over again, I hear those voices, and I wait for the quiet bridge to make my move.

To make it hurt.

Gods it hurts.